Summary

CK defended CD’s theory at a shooting party with the Bishop of Oxford, the Duke of Argyll, and Lord Ashburton. The discussion started as a result of shooting some blue rock-pigeons which were different from blue rocks of other localities. CK held that all pigeons were descended from one species.

CK proposed that mythological races, e.g., elves and dwarfs, were intermediate species between man and apes, and have become extinct by natural selection; i.e., by competition with a superior white race of man.

Summary

Sends C. W. Crocker’s address.

Doubts CWC can help with Mormodes.

Will see CD at Lubbock’s.

Summary

Wrote a "frightful screed" about aristocracy’s being a necessary consequence of natural selection, and then burnt it.

H. W. Bates is the only man "thinking out" natural selection to any purpose. "I think I have driven Bates back to Nat. Sel. as the only way of solving his difficulties."

HWB’s mimetic butterflies.

JDH wishes he had time to do the same thing with plants.

Owen and Huxley involved in a "contemptible" squabble in the Edinburgh newspapers.

Maximovitch reports Stellaria bulbifera is a Siberian form which never ripens its seeds.

Summary

Agrees with CD’s estimate of the man [unidentified]. Hopes CD will use his influence with Lubbock to try to prevent the Council’s placing him at the head of the Zoological Society.

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Sends dried specimens of Melastomataceae.

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Suggests a change in the postscript [referred to in 3423].

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Describes battles among bulls for leadership of the [Chillingham] herd.

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Has received diploma from the University of Breslau [honorary doctorate in medicine and surgery]. Should he forward it or will CD pick it up in London? [See 3226a and 3446.]

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Discusses his new microscope.

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Hopes CD will come to lunch on Saturday. The Busks and J. D. Hooker are with JL.

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Has forwarded a diploma from the University of Breslau [Honorary Doctorate in Medicine and Surgery].

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Thanks for Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63].

Separation of sexes in Billbergia.

Offers to experiment under CD’s direction, now that he has retired from Kew.

Summary

In his paper for Geological Society ["Glacial origin of certain lakes", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 18 (1862): 185–204] he will prove that all the lake-basins of the Alps were scooped out by glaciers.

Summary

Discusses politics in the U. S. and relations between Britain and America.

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Variation in Mollusca. The most abundant forms vary most.

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Reports on a bird, offspring of a male mule between a canary and greenfinch, and a hen canary.

Family news.

Summary

Box of Melastomataceae has arrived.

Talked with [Duke of] Argyll about Origin. He is between stools: Owen and Lyell.

Summary

Cites case of Owen’s getting compiler’s name removed from title of a British Museum catalogue.

Summary

Pleased at CD’s opinion of his Arctic plants paper. CD has caught great blunder.

Lack of Arctic–Asiatic species in mountains of tropical Asia does not trouble him. Species seem to indicate some "current of migration" from Europe and W. Asia southeastward to Ceylon – an awful staggerer to bridge migrations.

Summary

Suggests that the height of the water which formed the shelves in Glen Roy was determined not by the height of the blocking glacier but by the height of a col. Notes problems in the idea.